The great New England thaw

There’s a moment every year in New Hampshire when the snow finally gives up the fight.

Not gracefully.

Not all at once.

It just…starts losing.

The giant gray snowbanks in the parking lots shrink a little every day. The driveway puddles get deeper. The air smells like wet dirt and road salt and the faint promise of bad golf decisions.

And every Dad Bod within a 50-mile radius starts feeling it in his bones.

Winter hibernation is ending. 🏌️‍♂️

Now let’s be clear — New Hampshire golf season doesn’t start with sunshine and birds chirping like the Augusta commercial.

No sir.

It starts with sticks and mud.

The kind of mud that will swallow a golf cart tire whole.

The kind that adds four pounds to each shoe by the third hole.

The kind where you hit a perfectly respectable 7-iron only to watch the ball plug itself like a tick in the middle of the fairway.

But to us?

That’s paradise.

Because the alternative was the last five months.

Five months of looking out the window at snow piles taller than the grill.

Five months of pretending the simulator is “just as good as real golf.”

Five months of eating chili, drinking bourbon, and telling ourselves “spring will come eventually.”

And now it’s here.

Well…almost.

The courses aren’t exactly “open” yet.

They’re more like “legally questionable.”

You know the kind.

A handwritten sign on the clubhouse door that says:

“Walking only. No carts. Greens might be frozen. Play at your own risk.”

Translation:

“If you break your ankle in a puddle we were never open.”

But the Dad Bods don’t care.

Because the thaw means hope.

Hope that the swing we lost in October magically returns.

Hope that the belly we gained over winter somehow adds power instead of reducing flexibility.

Hope that this might finally be the year someone in the group breaks 90 without three breakfast balls and a “gallery drop.”

And then there’s Foss.

Now Foss, for reasons we’re still investigating, decided that New England winter was optional.

While the rest of us were shoveling driveways and Googling “indoor chipping drills,” Foss disappeared for two straight months of daily golf.

Daily.

Golf.

The man basically migrated south like a Canadian goose with a handicap index.

Meanwhile the rest of us were standing in the garage hitting foam balls into a laundry basket.

But that’s alright.

Because the thaw means the band is getting back together.

Soon the fairways will dry out.

The carts will come back.

The excuses will start flowing.

The Dad Bods will emerge from their winter dens, blinking in the sunlight, stretching hamstrings that haven’t moved since Thanksgiving.

And somewhere out there a 3-wood is waiting to be topped.

A wedge is waiting to be skulled across a green.

And a group of middle-aged idiots is about to spend six straight months proving that hope is the most powerful force in golf.

Right behind bourbon.

Spring is coming, boys.

Stick and mud season first.

Then golf season.

And if you see Foss…

tell him the migration window back north is officially open. 🦆🏌️‍♂️